


His

by foundCarcosa



Category: Fable (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-02
Updated: 2011-08-02
Packaged: 2017-10-22 03:49:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry survives a balverine attack. Or, rather, his body does. Not for long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His

**Author's Note:**

> (Just to clear it up, I didn't warn for Major Character Death because... well, Barry, as endearing and memorable as he is, isn't a major character. Unfortunately.)

_Turn. Please turn_.

There is no reason for this. The moon hangs fat and silvery between the gnarled branches of dead trees; the blood-hungry fever rages through his veins. Barry Hatch tenses, strains, arches his spine and juts his chin towards the indifferent moon. Nothing happens. His limbs do not elongate, his muscles do not thicken, his bones do not snap and twist and realign.

His grit-teeth growl of immense concentration shudders into a helpless and heavy sigh, and he falls to his haunches. Gnarled and clawed hands rest on his bare thighs, hands that had always been rather clumsy and calloused, but had sometimes managed to please Reaver nonetheless. Now, he could scarcely scratch an itch lest he come away with a chunk of flesh.

"You were bitten during the full moon, so wait for the next," came the terse and dismissive advice from Connor, a villager who hadn't much cared for Barry's 'weakness'. "You have to transform into full balverine form before you can possibly master transforming back to human."

Barry's head lifts to cast a jaundiced glare at said moon, mismatched eyes hooded by a pronounced brow and grimy tufts of russet hair.

Reaver had already called for the cleaner when Barry started, heaved, coughed up a fair amount of half-congealed blood, and staggered to clawed feet that had already burst out of fine leather shoes. The industrialist was muttering to himself as he surveyed the royal mess his guests had made of the dining room, muttering about the gall of Heroes and the price of entertainment in a world that was becoming increasingly less entertaining as the years progressed... he subsided as soon as he heard the clicking of elongated toenails on shining wood. It took him a long moment to inhale deeply and turn around.

Remembering, Barry's hands clench. He yelps at the stabbing pain in his palms, watches blood bubble in the claw-wounds.

"Wh--" Reaver had started to speak, presumably ask a question of some sort. But his narrowed eyes raked over a hunched frame and inconsistently furred flesh, over an elongated jaw and twitching claws, over the still-oozing neck wound that had ended Barry's human existence. _Half-man, half-balverine,_ his mind supplied him as a conclusion. What little colour existed in his complexion took a holiday.

"Y- _You_ ," he gasped, shaking his head and stepping back as if attempting to deny the undeniable. "What-- what  _is_  this, this is _disgusting_... haven't you the sense to just... _turn_  into one instead of..." He flicked a ringed hand in Barry's general direction, swallowing hard, revulsion curling his already-cruel lips. Barry would have hunched his shoulders, but they were already curved into his neck as it were.

"I'm sorry," he tried, "I'm sorry, help me," but his deformed jaw wouldn't form the words correctly. Reaver grimaced, mimed dry-heaving, turned away. Barry's eyes burned.

"Go," were the last quiet words spoken by Barry's lifelong master, the frightening and arousing and arresting and irresistible man who'd snatched him out of the swaddling clothes of a past servant and hesitated instead of tossing his squalling infant form out of the second-story window.

"I can't--" Barry tried again. His own gorge was rising, anxiety and self-loathing and pure, abject _fear_ churning his already unsettled stomach.

"Get _out_  of my _home_!" The clipped and shouted words rang like death-knells, and Barry's stomach lurched warningly. "Oh, I'd thought you strange from the start, hadn't I, strange and unfortunate and _unlucky_ , but oh, how _arrogant_  I was to believe that my influence would make a better creature out of you, snivelling and incorrigible-- just--! Get _out_! Get out, get out, _get out_!"

The last words were punctuated by a whoosh of air and the swiftly-drawn pistol pointed straight at Barry's quaking form.  
But Reaver was trembling as well. Had the boy remained a moment longer, he might have seen Reaver miss his mark for the first time.

Reaver had considered becoming a balverine once, Barry remembers. There was great power in being a shape-shifting creature, especially one of such considerable strength and agility. There was great power in being _feared_. But likewise, there was great power in being charismatic and eternally pleasing to the eye, in being cunning and manipulative, in being _Reaver_ , acquirer of wealth, sower of amorality, harvester of sorrows.

There was no power in being malformed, in being ugly, in being a failure. And Reaver abided no one upon whom he couldn't even bear to lay his discerning eyes. No matter how devoted.

The trees whisper, bringing him back to the present, dry boughs stroking each other as the chilly night air stirs them. Barry tries one last time, an agonised groan escalating into a wordless, dissonant cry. He'd been nothing when he was born; he'd learnt his role under Reaver's hand and lash. One does not take kindly to losing oneself when their sense of self was so tenuous from the start...  
 _"Ah, Barry, so amusing. Do you really think that, hmm? I'll impart a little secret, yes... you're old enough to handle secrets, aren't you, lad?"_

Barry pushes himself to an unsteady standing position, no longer trembling. Millfields and the manor weren't far away, and Reaver wouldn't be there to ridicule him now. Barry knows Reaver left, like a thief in the night, his new location unknown to anyone who could possibly muster the presence of mind to gossip. Barry's heard; Barry knows.

 _"The delightful young lasses that I let you take to your room after our little get-togethers? Mine. The little boys you play with whilst Master Reaver's busy taking care of things in Bowerstone Industrial? Mine."_

He half-runs, half-gallops with awkward gait and varying speed, but he's determined. He'll make it to the manor. He's tried his best to please Reaver, to prove his worth, but to what avail? Reaver is gone, anyway. Barry is no longer his. Barry is his own man, who can determine his own fate.

 _"They play with you because I ask them to. Because you've been a good lad, or because I don't want to put up with your whining and pawing upon my return. They're not yours, Barry. You are mine, therefore everything that comes your way is, by default... whose? --Do not hunch up like that, fix your posture. Answer me."_

He knows exactly where the guards are, the trigger-happy night watchmen who would shoot drunks on sight just because their staggering gait is briefly alarming. He lurches past them, letting out a strangled, impotent growl for good measure; he flinches as the first ringing shot grazes his arm, but soldiers on towards Lake View Manor with the guard hot on his trail. "Back here wit' y', filthy mongrel--! _Blast_!"

 _"Don't look at me like that, like I've somehow wronged you. I've given you everything you've ever known. If not for me, you wouldn't have even had a chance to cut your first tooth. You'd be fish food in Bower Lake, if you were lucky."_

The shots whizz and ping past his ears, his legs, his flailing hands, but he manages to make it to the gates. He takes a leap, latches onto the top of the wrought-iron gate, and hauls himself over. A bullet sinks into the meaty flesh of his thigh and lodges in deep as he crashes to the flagstone.

 _"Where would you be without me, hm?_ Whom _would you be? Be grateful for me, Barry. I gave you life. I can take it away."_

Howling in agony, seeing spots and stars and grey patches, he scrabbles up the stone path until he reaches the gleaming white statue. Behind him, another guard shouts, the first guard reloads his pistol, and he's shot again. Pain explodes behind his eyes, shorts out his brain. He can barely reach for the base of the statue, but he somehow manages to pull himself onto it, draping his deformed frame over the alabaster feet.

There's an unexpected lull whilst the guards look at each other in confusion. _Y' like t' spill my blood, Master Reaver, I know y'do. Here. Have it. Have it all._

After the final shot rings out and they're sure the strange creature is expired, the guards get Someone Of Authority to open the manor gates in the interest of "cleaning up property that will soon be sold". They crowd around the statue of the manor's former lord, peering down at the half-man, half-creature draped limply at its base whilst fat flies buzz lazily around them.

"E'er seen a balverine smilin' before?" one asks the other, and the other slowly shakes his head.


End file.
